beautiful imperfection

I hated making revisions to THE INFERNAL FAMILY. Every mistake I found was another sign that I was a bad writer. If I was any good at this I would have written a better draft in the first place.

Now that I’m revising IRONBANE, I find I’m mellowing out. If I’m making changes, it’s not because I should have done better the first time around. It just means I’ve learned something: I see now what I couldn’t see then. Mistakes are just opportunities.

(Sparked by the realisation that when your two antagonists have one plot role, one master plan and one compelling motivation-providing backstory between them, you probably only have one antagonist.)

What about you? How do you feel during revisions?

halfway

Halfway through revising IRONBANE. The last few chapters have been hard work. I had to restructure a 30,000-word sequence around my new antagonist, reshuffling half a dozen chapters and cutting about a third of the wordcount. But my critique partner Dystophil has given her unofficial seal of approval, so I’m happy. :)

third draft, this time with 100% more snarkiness

Lately I’ve needed some time away from my urban fantasy THE INFERNAL FAMILY, so I’ve been focusing on revisions to IRONBANE. I feel like I need more time to prepare for the second most dramatic change in my urban fantasy’s history: adding a new point of view character.

Currently the story is shaped by the fact that the only viewpoint character is a trigger-happy borderline psychopath whose preferred method of communication is violence. Most of the other characters don’t trust him, so he’s excluded from key plot developments. Plus he’s not human and that limits who he can interact with. So I’m planning to supplement his story with a truckload of new scenes from the viewpoint of his smarter, sneakier, snarkier human partner. This is going to be a metric ton of work, but I hope it will solve a lot of problems:

• I always dreamed of having the protagonist’s partner infiltrate the bad guys using his evil devious mind. That wasn’t possible when the only viewpoint character was excluded. Now I can try that.
• My bad guys will have some much-needed screen time. I can show more hunters with names and faces and motivations. I can suggest what they’re doing when they’re offscreen. I can make things a little more complicated. I’m also going to add a new antagonist.
• A whole ton of plot I always imagined was happening offscreen never got onscreen due to viewpoint limitations. One late-stage revelation will no longer be at all surprising, but apparently it wasn’t surprising anyway -- one beta reader called it 40,000 words in advance!
• I’m looking forward to showing that the protagonist is as mystifying to his partner as the partner is to the protagonist. Neither has a clue what the other is thinking.
• The partner is clued-up in several key places where the protagonist is clueless. For example, the protagonist doesn't know the true story behind how everyone first met.
  
• I also want the two viewpoint characters to interfere with each other. The partner is prone to carefully-laid plans. The protagonist is prone to sudden explosive violence. The two should not mix.
• The second half of the novel is derailed by romance stuff. I’m hoping to add more plot.
• The novel has always been short -- the beta version is under 70,000 words. I'd feel more comfortable around 90,000 words.

The reason I’m thinking about this right now when I should be working on IRONBANE? I finally figured out something going on behind the scenes that the protagonist doesn’t know about, and it’s awesome.

Still not ready to resume working on THE INFERNAL FAMILY, but I’m getting there.

day four of holly lisle’s one-pass revision method

The secret purpose of these daily reports is to make me feel guilty about lack of progress. I was planning to pack it in and go to bed at midnight, with one pathetic chapter under my belt, but then I realised I would have to confess my failure. Again. So I got back to work.

Once again, I’m feeling a little wary. I’m just not finding that many problems. Places to tighten, absolutely. Continuity errors, often. Stuff I mentioned once and never again, sometimes. (I’m enjoying rediscovering elements I planned to make much more of but forgot.) But I’m currently editing the seventh chapter, and I still haven’t had to rip out this novel’s entire skeleton and wire in a new one. The dialogue is spiky, the conflict is tense, my protagonist is snarky and frequently horrifying, backstory is arriving bit by bit -- the Winter Queen just got her first mention. It’s mostly fine. And that in itself is bizarre.

By the time I got to this stage with THE INFERNAL FAMILY, I’d already done a spectacularly huge rethink -- characters, setting, genre, antagonist, entire species -- twice. I bled. I cried. I tore my hair out. Most of the novel was scrapped and rewritten from scratch.

I can’t shake the suspicion that by hunting piddling little continuity errors I’m rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. There must be an iceberg lurking under the surface. I can’t imagine a revision voyage without one.

Keeping the lifejacket at hand.

day two of holly lisle’s one-pass revision method

Today I ran out of procrastination options and cracked on with editing my first chapter. It’s been both scary and fun.

It’s surprisingly satisfying to edit on paper. Unlike editing onscreen, where however hard you work nothing seems to change, this way I can see my own writing spidering all over the page: crossed-out words and scribbled notes. I like that.

On the other hand, I fear that I’m misapplying the One-Pass Method. Holly Lisle’s introduction led me to think that the purpose is to slash chapters at a time, drastically change plotlines, strike out entire characters, etc. But I’m finding myself primarily cutting excess wordcount. I’ve taken about 10% out of my first chapter just by cutting words and clauses. That’s disconcerting, because I think of myself as a short writer: I broke the long writing habit after my 220k monster novel and both my recent novels came in around 80k. Apparently I still have fat to lose.

I’m glad I found that out, but I’m also kind of scared that I’m not finding major game-changing big-picture problems. Am I going too easy? Are there problems I’m not seeing?

It’s possible that this first chapter is just totally awesome, since my other critique group liked it. I might be so traumatised by editing THE INFERNAL FAMILY that I won’t be satisfied until I’m bleeding from the eyes and ripping out key elements of the story.

I could be learning to write cleaner first drafts. I like that idea.

holly lisle’s one-pass revision method

As you might have guessed from the teasers, the first draft of my epic fantasy IRONBANE is banging on the inside of its drawer screaming to be revised. I’m still traumatised from revising THE INFERNAL FAMILY, so this time I thought I’d do something a little different: Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision Method.

I've always loved the concept of the One-Pass Revision Method. The discovery stage is particularly helpful -- you have to establish in only a handful of words key aspects of the story, such as the theme, one-line summary, protagonist's character arc, etc. Every time I start a novel I use these tricks to keep my first draft focused. Also, my friend Amy Bai used the One-Pass Revision Method for her brilliant fantasy novel SONG. I'm secretly hoping that my IRONBANE will be a tiny bit as awesome as SONG by the time I'm done.

So I've assembled:

1. Three coloured pens.
2. One fresh notebook, now adorned with pretty stickers, because I am secretly a three-year-old.
3. My printed first draft, a monstrous stack of paper that cannot possibly be only 85k.

The discovery section doesn’t hold too many fears for me, since I've already written a one-line summary, a one-paragraph summary and a query long before now, so I’m just going to note down some key ideas, themes and storylines and move straight into the hacking and slashing.

Wish me luck!

revision blues

"You’re a poser. You talk the talk but you can’t walk the walk. Thinking isn’t writing, editing isn’t writing, only writing is writing. If you’re not making 1000+ words a day you’re not even trying. You get so little work done it’s embarrassing. A real writer would be finished already: you'll still be messing around this time next year. How are you ever going to be a professional? Nobody wants to work with losers like you. Why do you even call yourself a writer?"

Welcome back, revision blues. :(